Michael Angelo Buonarroti / With Translations Of The Life Of The Master By His Scholar, Ascanio Condivi, And Three Dialogues From The Portugese By Francisco d'Ollanda

by Charles Holroyd

THE PROPHET JEREMIAH

SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME
(By permission of the Fratelli Alinari, Florence)

The first division above the High Altar represents the creation of light. God separates light from darkness, and brings order out of chaos. In the second division, one of the larger pictures, God creates the sun and moon; He [pg 171]passes on and spreads His hand in blessing over a segment of the earth where the trees and herbs spring forth. In the third, God gathers together in one place the waters which were under the firmament. In these works Michael Angelo designed a figure of the Creator that has remained ever since the only possible pictorial symbol of God the Father. He is like an old man in appearance and in wisdom, but as alert and powerful as a young man. The creation of Adam is the central composition of the ceiling. The Deity, accompanied by six angels, gives life to Adam by the touch of finger tips. The figure of Adam is the most beautiful in modern art. It appears to have been inspired by a Greek intaglio. The angels are much varied in type. They are without the tinsel and gold embroidery used by earlier artists to represent celestial glory. The simple and solemn lines of the landscape showing the curved surface of the globe give a cosmic character to the scene, and the beautiful indigo blue of the distance forms a fine background for the supremely modelled flesh. This composition is the first in the order of execution in which Michael Angelo fully realised his scheme of decoration, as to scale and form, making a few figures fill the space allotted to them with ease and freedom of movement. Truly the space occupied appears to have been arranged and cut specially to suit the figures, and not the figures made, as was the fact, to fit the space. The next compartment, the creation of Eve, is only less beautiful than that of the Adam. It is small, and the space is a little crowded: the composition is taken exactly from the beautiful bas-relief by Jacopo della Quercia at Bologna. The Almighty is shrouded in a voluminous mantle; Eve joins her hands in worship. The figure is modelled with [pg 172]a delicious softness, and the pearly colour is a delightful rendering of the lighter flesh tints of woman, something like the quality sought by Correggio in later times. The Adam reclining in the corner fills that part of the space as a good medal design fits its circumference; the grey of the shadow, especially in the darker parts, envelops the figures in a way that had never been attempted in fresco painting, but is somewhat like a hand in shadow by Rembrandt. The representations of the Fall and the Expulsion fill the next compartment, a large one. Here we have another rendering of a female nude; the type, and especially the modelling of the flank, is a prophecy of the figure of Dawn in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo. The upper part of the serpent has a woman's form, and the junction is most admirably managed after the manner of the sea maidens in Græco-Roman art. In this story is the only foreground tree in full leaf ever painted by Michael Angelo, and yet it is as supreme as everything else. It is remarkable that the Paradise of Michael Angelo should be such a rocky place, like the side of a marble mountain, for in his time such places were regarded with distaste. The landscape into which Adam and Eve are expelled is a lone flat desert, where no marble could be found. This part of the composition is taken almost exactly from Massaccio's version in the Brancacci Chapel. The Sacrifice of Noah fills the next, a smaller compartment. It is placed, historically, before the Deluge, and must be taken to represent how Noah, the just man and perfect, and his family, found grace in the eyes of the Lord. As there are five male persons present, this scene cannot represent the sacrifice immediately after the Flood, nor is any rainbow to be seen as was usual in the traditional representations of that subject, [pg 173]like the one in the Chiostro Verde at Santa Maria Novella. Raphael also gives more figures than can be accounted for as having been in the ark in his composition of the sacrifice of Noah, in the series called the Bible of Raphael in the Loggia. The large composition of the Deluge gives us some idea of what the cartoon of Pisa may have been like. There never was a collection of naked figures so many and so beautiful. One is filled with sorrow at the idea of their being drowned. They are all, too, engaged in noble works; charity, energy, and inventiveness are amongst the virtues they exhibit; there is no panic, or struggling one with another; no anger or selfishness, excepting only in the boat in the middle distance; a woman helps her children, a man his wife, an old man bears a young man in his arms, Priam carrying Æneas, an even more pathetic imagination than Homer's; others attempt to save their household goods; others erect a tent; others, again, attempt to scale the sides of the ark or break into it with axes—one cannot but hope they will succeed. The female figures are especially beautiful in this picture, and again we have a foretaste of that wonderful modelling of the flank and thigh seen to perfection in the tombs at San Lorenzo. The weird sea and sky, the ark and the dead tree, show what Michael Angelo could do when he liked, in departments of art other than the human figure. The individual figures in the Deluge are difficult to see on account of the smallness of scale in this part of the vault. It must have been after seeing them from the floor of the chapel, by removing some of the boards of his scaffolding, that Michael Angelo determined to alter the scale in the remaining compositions. In no other way can we account for the change in the size of the Athletes, at [pg 174]any rate. The difference of scale between those surrounding the Sin of Ham over the large door, and those surrounding the separation of Light from Darkness over the High Altar, must be almost two feet. The increase is gradual along the ceiling. Similarly the Sybilla Delphica is very much smaller than the Sybilla Lybica, and the Prophet Joel than the Prophet Jeremiah. The last composition of this series—a small one—represents the Sin of Ham, and was the first painted. The vat and the wine jug are wonderful still-life, reminding us of Bassano.

THE FLOOD

A DETAIL, SISTINE CHAPEL, ROME
(Reproduced by permission from a photograph by Sig. D. Anderson, Rome)

The twenty Athletes that decorate the corners of these central compositions, and support bronze medallions held in place by oak garlands or by draperies, are nothing but the most direct of transcripts from the nude model, but the most noble that have been executed in the art of painting. They are finished to the smallest detail, and are as truthful to nature as it was possible for a man with an innate sense of grandeur of line to make them. Italian models have been posed in the positions of most of them, and drawings from them compared with the photographs of these figures; they are marvellously true, to the very wrinkles of the skin under the arms and about the knees, and the drawing of the curves and creases of the torso as the body bends. So naturalistic are they that Michael Angelo must have posed a model and made drawings in the chapel itself, perhaps even on the scaffolding, and worked straight away. He appears to have used only three models for this purpose. The Athletes drawn from the same model can easily be distinguished; they are actual portraits. One was the man who sat for the Adam, and was of a noble proportion with a small head, a beautiful brow, and a solemn mouth. His hair was wavy and of a wispy character; he [pg 175]had broad shoulders; his extremities were small, the thighs large and well developed, showing the individual muscles by large forms with flat planes. He may be seen, as we have said, in the Adam, and in the four figures surrounding the fresco representing God dividing the Light from the Darkness; in the two figures near the Adam in his creation of Eve; and best of all, for comparison, in the figures near the foot of Adam in the creation of Man. Another model was of a rounder and more bacchanalian character, not unlike the Dancing Fawn in the Uffizi; but he was not in such good training. He was decidedly fat, his face was mobile, and very easily took jovial expressions, his cheeks dimpled, his eyes round and large, the pupils very dark and the whites very white; his hair went into short, soft, frizzy curls; his shoulders were small and round, the arms feeble, the thighs short, round, and formless; his back was well developed, the folds of the skin in the torso, when he bent, were very large and fat in line. It was probably for this that Michael Angelo chose him. He is well seen in three of the figures surrounding the third panel from the High Altar representing The Spirit of God upon the Face of the Waters, and the two figures nearest to the Adam and Eve in the scene of the Expulsion. The other model was of more ordinary but of still very fine proportion. His head was rather large, and his mouth petulant in expression, the upper eyelids very thick; his hair is broken into large, hard curls. He is seen in the figures surrounding the Sin of Ham, and was probably the first employed for this work. These Athletes are the very epitome of the work of Michael Angelo. If a man does not love them he cannot care for the work of Michael Angelo. They express his highest idea of beauty—man [pg 176]created in the image of God, as he testifies in this vault, and in the sonnet ending:—